One Toronto Paper Gongs All Three Ontario Party Leaders

By Doug Draper

As Ontario Election Day draws ever so near, there are the inevitable newspaper endorsements.

Those endorsements of one party or another will start coming out fast and furious now, and one of the first newspapers out of the gate is The Toronto Sun.

Now, I’ve got to admit that I have never taken The Toronto Sun as seriously as The Toronto Star, Globe and Mail or any one of a number of dailies across the province. Although, with the way the quality of news and analysis has sunk in far too many papers in this region and others, The Sun is looking better all the time and its endorsement piece – or should I say anti-endorsement – is worth a mention because it is a little unusual.
Point is that instead of the usual editorial supporting the Conservatives, The Toronto Sun published an editorial this Sunday endorsing none of the parties or their leaders.

Over a headline reading: “Ontario deserves better,” The Sun ran cartoon images of the NDP, Conservative and Liberal leaders respectively, identifying them as “Andrea Doubtfire,” “Mr. Tim Bean,” and “Dalton Taxsaw Masochist.”

“From the start of this election campaign, we have called for a champion to emerge from the political pack,” begins the editorial. “We looked at the three major party leaders and we do not see that individual.”

The editorial goes on to charge that “Premier Dalton McGuinty has never been the champion of ordinary working people. …. In the two previous elections he promised not to raise taxes and did. That makes his promise this time a joke.”

NDP leader Andrea Horwath is at least credited for “speak(ing) the rhetoric of ordinary people” and for running a “clever campaign. … But she ‘s mouthing the same old, discredited NDP rhetoric that brought this province to its knees financially from 1990 to 1995.” The editorial concludes that Horwarth’s “(belief) that she can spend Ontario rich by taxing business and cozying up to public sector unions (is) a recipe for disaster.”

Those criticisms are sharp enough but perhaps the leader who should feel the most disappointed or offended by the Sun editorial is Conservative leader Tim Hudak since this newspaper has had a track record in the past of supporting just about any candidate dipped in a can of blue paint.

The paper expresses its disappointment in Hudak for what it sees as his failure “to come out swinging against big government, high taxes, runaway debt and greedy public sector unions.” His platform, the paper concludes, “”is not the robust, fiscally conservative agenda Ontario needs in these difficult economic times (and) mimics McGuinty policies we can’t afford.”

At the end of this ‘take-no-prisoners-alive’ editorial, though, the Sun still ends by encouraging people to go out and vote. But for whom? Readers of the editorial may be left asking; “Where is the Rhinocerus Party when we need it?’

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